Thanks in large part to his association with the 9/11
Truth movement, Van Jones is
no longer a member of the Obama White House. Jones resigned last week amid
a swirl of controversy -- prodded on largely by Fox News' Glenn Beck -- that
included the former "green jobs" advisor's signing of a petition put out by
the 9/11 Truth movement urging a further investigation into the World Trade
Center attacks. Most controversially, the petition wondered darkly that "unanswered
questions ... suggest that people within the current administration may indeed
have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war," before
drifting into a list of wild and dubious speculation. (You can read
the petition right here.)

Initially, Jones said that he hadn't fully reviewed the statement before he
signed. But that didn't stop the onslaught of bad publicity that ultimately
led to his exit.

The statement was released in October 2004 and has been signed by nearly 200
people, including many relatives of those who lost someone in the attacks. It
called for an investigation into 9/11 but also directly questioned the government's
conclusions about the plane crashes.

In the wake of Jones' departure, Politico's
Ben Smith contacted two other signatories of the statement, Rabbi Michael
Lerner and historian Howard Zinn. Smith found that both men felt they had signed
a petition of more limited scope than the one that appears at the 9/11 Truth
Web site, one that asked only for an investigation into the attacks and not
one questioning President Bush's prior knowledge of 9/11.

Salon contacted nearly 30 of the petition's signatories to see if they felt,
as did Lerner, Zinn and Jones, that the document didn't reflect their views
on 9/11. We asked a simple question: If you had to do it all over again, would
you still sign the statement?

Salon has not heard back from two of the statement's most famous signatories:
actor Ed Asner and comedian Janeane Garofalo. (Updated: We
have received and added Asner's response to the list below.) But many
did respond and most -- though not all -- expressed their full-fledged support
for the petition. Their responses are below:

Ed Asner (through his company, Quince Productions): Mr. Asner
would sign the petition again without the slightest hesitation.

Gray Brechin, historical geographer
and visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley's Department
of Geography: Until recently, I thought that I (like Van Jones)
live in a country with a First Amendment that permits freedom of speech, thought
and petition without fear of reprisal. I had that pleasant illusion despite
growing up in the dark shadow of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, of red scares, blacklists
and witch hunts, of the John Birch Society (and worse), which the Old Guard
of the Republican Party then considered zanies. The ideological descendants
of those wackos have since taken over that party. I suspect that you did not
grow up at that time.

Since when did Salon permit Glenn Beck and the almost equally loony WSJ editorial
page to set the terms of discussion, calling those who want answers to so much
that remains unexplained about 9/11 "truthers" and thus giving them equivalence
with "birthers," "deathers" and "tea baggers"? Since when was Van Jones a "czar"
rather than an advisor? Since when was he not entitled to his opinions, past
or present? Was it when he was born black and inexcusably smart? Jones is the
kind of visionary with whom Franklin Roosevelt surrounded himself but of which
the Obama administration is almost entirely bereft, and now that administration
has shamefully thrown him to the sharks. ...

Disclaimer
The views expressed in this article are the sole
responsibility of the author, who is solely responsible for its content,
and do not necessarily reflect those of 911Truth.org. 911Truth.org will
not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements
contained in this article.

Fair Use Notice
This page contains copyrighted material, the use of which has not always
been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such
material available in our efforts to advance understanding of political
issues relating to alternative views of the 9/11 events, etc. We believe
this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided
for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit
to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research and educational purposes. For more information go
to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use
copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond
"fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.